African American Bail System Essay

Although racism has improved over the years, many African Americans face racial discrimination daily. Slavery has always been a prominent part of history in America and still has effects on today's society. Today, African Americans are still treated differently because of their skin color. Being treated differently because of their skin color is so immoral and unfair. This treatment has to do with the strong roots of racism that stem in the United States. One of the main areas where African Americans are facing discrimination is in the United States legal system, more specifically the bail system. African Americans constantly deal with the social injustice of racial discrimination within the bail system in the United States.

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This is because of the racism that still affects the prison system today in the United States. Although slavery ended a long time ago, racism has still carried on over the years. In the bail system, African Americans and people of color are faced with racial discrimination on a daily. Higher cash bail amounts are set for people of color in order to try and keep them incarcerated. In the article “The Bail System Is Racist and Unjust. It Needs to Be Reformed” by Justin Sherman and Leah Abrams, they talk about how even the digital risk assessment algorithms (RAA’s) that recommend the bail amount for accused criminals are prejudiced and are likely to falsely flag African Americans as high risk at twice the rate of whites. These machines are supposed to stop human bias but they do not, these programs can be just as biased as the people programming them. Prior to African Americans even being able to get a fair trial, they face racial discrimination. For instance, there are many studies found that show how African American people are more likely to be stopped and arrested by police because of racial and socioeconomic biases. In particular, a study found by

Even though slavery has ended, racial problems have stayed evident throughout the United States legal system. For instance, African Americans are more likely to have a higher bail amount than White Americans for the same crimes. This is because of the deep racial issues found within the states. Most of the time when a person is given bail, it is a cash bail, this is because it is the most common condition for pretrial release. Cash bail means that in order to gain your freedom, you must pay a particular amount of money. Originally the cash bail system was designed to make sure people reported to their trial. However, some states have eliminated the cash bail system and the data shows that removing bail does not decrease whether a person reports to trial or not. Cash bail is a way of reinforcing racial and economic disparities. These disparities result in huge differences in pretrial detention. In the article “Profit Over People” by Allie Preston and Rachael Eisenberg, they talk about how“Sixty-one percent of people who are arrested for a felony are given a cash bail assignment” (Preston and Eisenberg). This indicates that 61% of people who are arrested do not have access to their freedom unless they are able to pay their bail. Therefore hundreds of thousands of people will be imprisoned in pretrial detention unless they are able to come up with the amount of